| Dainbramage (White Giant) | Wednesday, May 27, 2009 - 08:52 pm 
My 5 countries have been spending money like water for the past few (real) days. I've gone through about $40T in 4 days. I can't figure out what's changed. As far as I can tell, my countries have started buying weapons, but my order strategies say they shouldn't be. The only thing I've done with weapons lately is move some around internally between the countries to balance inventory a bit. With this much purchasing, I'd expect my defence index to shoot up, but it's only moved up about 2 points. There don't seem to be enough weapons in inventory to account for $40T in spending, but weapons purchases are the only thing on my financial statements that account for the missing cash. Any ideas? is anyone else experiencing this? |
| Ummagumma (Little Upsilon) | Thursday, May 28, 2009 - 12:24 am
Yes, I made a thread about it, but it has been an on going thing. (I have over 50 years of data to back it up.).The profit/loss and your cash position just does not jive. Now, it seems to have been accelerated these past 3 or 4 game years. (Perhaps a game change we weren't notified of?)
I have for 3 or 4 years now been buying more ammo than I have in total military value! This, of course, is not possible according to my military budget. We will see about this year, so far no ammo has been bought but I'm sure I'll buy more.
In fact I added all my monthly ammo usage and calculated that I should have about 10 years worth of stock, which, or course I don't have. Again, I don't mind some descrepancies, I just hate these huge fudge factors. |
| Dainbramage (White Giant) | Thursday, May 28, 2009 - 01:18 am
Well, another 8T gone since I posted this morning. My countries are taking on loans now. With the game month about to change again, I'm going to be deep in debt in no time. |
| Dainbramage (White Giant) | Thursday, May 28, 2009 - 01:53 am
From one of my countrys' financial statement - YTD
Income/Cost for Defensive Weapons and Ammo -3,107,362.96M SC$
YTD = 2 months. So the other night when I started noticing this problem, I pasted my defensive weapons inventory into excel. Comparing those numbers to today's, most inventory has gone DOWN (standard usage I assume.) Only 2 items have gone up, and at current market prices account for about 100B. The other countries look about the same. I'm at a loss.
Ugh, the more math I do the worse it looks. I've been spending 1-2T per month (per country) on defensive weapons for 9 game months. I just totalled the value of my defensive weapons inventory in one such country and it's only 2.6T. So I started with about 2.5T worth in stock, spent 9T, and have 2.6T in stock now. Did someone put a decimal in the wrong place? |
| Ummagumma | Thursday, May 28, 2009 - 04:57 am
Nah, I just think the GM is skimmin' off the top, so to say... |
| Ummagumma (Little Upsilon) | Thursday, May 28, 2009 - 05:08 am
I did the same thing as you keeping stats, except I have over 50 yrs of data. Same hemorrhage. Except accelerated greatly as of late.
I guess your country was doing too good. Oh, and let me guess your profit/loss is still in the green too, right? Quite a fudge factor, eh? |
| Jonni Gil | Thursday, May 28, 2009 - 01:49 pm
None of the above, accounting in simcountry is extremely precise.
We will however make sure to publish more data about cashflow in countries soon, to make it easier to understand for everyone.
Cheers, Jonni. |
| Ummagumma | Thursday, May 28, 2009 - 01:54 pm
You are most certainly wrong. Extremely precise. Please, how about a factor of 10?. It is definitely a bug in the program or the GM skimming off the top of sucessful players. Period. |
| Jonni Gil | Thursday, May 28, 2009 - 02:10 pm
Dancers who can't dance will always say the floor is uneven. |
| Dainbramage (White Giant) | Thursday, May 28, 2009 - 06:57 pm
Well, since my previous post, all my cash is gone and all my countries are taking loans. The latest from my financial statement in the same country I posted about earlier:
Income/Cost for Defensive Weapons and Ammo -7,567,694.63M SC$
So another 4.4T spent for defensive weapons, but my weapons inventory doesn't appear to have changed. I've watched it as closely as possible and never seen any weapons in "pending deliveries." Recent purchases has never shown anything in any of my countries since I started playing 2 years ago, so no help there.
I'll freely admit that I don't know everything there is to know about Simcountry, but when I've been playing successfully for 2 years, changed nothing, and lost all my cash in 4 days, something is wrong. The only thing I did that was out of the ordinary was transfer some weapons between my countries. Since then, everything has gone nuts.
How deep into debt will my countries go before it's game over? |
| Dainbramage (White Giant) | Thursday, May 28, 2009 - 07:18 pm
Proof it's a bug:
The financial statement says I've spent 7,567,694.63M SC$ on defensive weapons in 5 game months. This is more than the monthly spending space limit allows! |
| Ummagumma (Little Upsilon) | Thursday, May 28, 2009 - 07:39 pm
Oh, yea it's a bug alright but it seems to be a random bug. Of course, according to the previous poster, the "dance instructor" we just don't understand the game. I know better now. I waited until I had over 50 yrs of proof before making the claim online, now we will see dust fly. I will either expose a bug or "skimming" by the GM.
I hope it is a bug as I want to keep playing and support this game, otherwise.... |
| Dainbramage (White Giant) | Thursday, May 28, 2009 - 10:53 pm
I have to correct my previous post, the 7,567,694.63M SC$ spent was only over 4 game months. May has kicked in another 2.2T in defensive weapons purchases (all from loans of course)
Income/Cost for Defensive Weapons and Ammo -9,774,461.84M SC$ |
| The Goldern Khan (Fearless Blue) | Thursday, May 28, 2009 - 11:09 pm
I was bleeding cash until I disbanded my garrisons. |
| Dainbramage (White Giant) | Friday, May 29, 2009 - 12:42 am
I don't think it's the garrisons. They're all stocked up so they don't seem to be ordering. At this point, I'll try anything before there's nothing left for the garrisons to protect. At what rate were you losing money? |
| Ummagumma (Little Upsilon) | Friday, May 29, 2009 - 01:23 am
I thought at first it was the garrisons, but I disbanded all the garrisons and it was still purchasing all this ammo.
You know, I wouldn't have a problem with it if I could see where all the ammo was going, cause it sure doesn't show up in my stock or as monthly use. I should have like 10 yrs worth of ammo.... Trippy stuff. |
| Ummagumma (Little Upsilon) | Friday, May 29, 2009 - 01:26 am
Also, it must be purchasing this ammo off the pruchasing screen . I've been leaving the game on constantly and checking purchases every month now for 2 years and yet to see any ammo being purchased yet it shows, in the cash balance sheet.
I have purchased more than what my entire military is worth.. LOL |
| Ravenous Cannibal (White Giant) | Friday, May 29, 2009 - 08:43 am
If you haven't disbanded your garrisons than you don't know what your military is worth.
Suppose you accidentally set the number of nuclear defense missiles to 1002 instead of increasing it by 20. One time I set up order strategies and set if to buy 50,000 months of ammo instead of 50,000 units.
post the name of your country and drop secrecy for financial data if you want any usable advice. |
| Ummagumma (Little Upsilon) | Friday, May 29, 2009 - 01:49 pm
Oh yes I do, I keep detailed records of what is bought and used. I know exactly what I should have. |
| Dainbramage (White Giant) | Friday, May 29, 2009 - 05:46 pm
Disbanding garrisons appears to have stopped the bleed, but it still doesn't make complete sense. There still seems to be some undesirable features (bugs, glitches, missing info from reports, or just bad UI arrangement) at play...
#1. The garrisons can purchase beyond the military spending limits.
#2. Garrison purchases don't show up in the recent purchases.
#3. Garrison purchases don't show up in pending deliveries.
#4. Garrisoned weapons don't show up in inventory
#5. Garrisoned weapons don't seem to effect defense index (possible because of #4?)
#6. Garrison weapon usage doesn't seem to be displayed anywhere
#7. (related to #6) Garrisons appear to keep ordering even when they're fully stocked.
#8. Garrison orders may not follow country product order quality rules.
Put it all together, and you end up in my situation... Cash disappearing at an amazing rate and no way to track where it goes.
After disbanding the garrisons, weapons showed up in inventory. I did the math and the total value of what's now in stock still doesn't add up to what was spent. It's off by about 50%. Some of this could be usage (#6 above) and some could be related to quality (#8 above) of weapons since actual order terms are completely unknown (#3 above.)
Now I have a very large hole to climb out of. Time to sell sell sell. |
| Ummagumma (Little Upsilon) | Friday, May 29, 2009 - 06:45 pm
Yes to all of above I suspect. Perhaps we should wait for some explanation/clarification (since I don't see anything in the docs to explain this) from the GM. Instead we will probably get some ridicule from a fan boi. |
| Siva . (Little Upsilon) | Saturday, May 30, 2009 - 02:58 am
Ammo usage of deployed units/units in garrisons shows up under your "Total Defense Cost" row in your country's financial statement. |
| Dainbramage (White Giant) | Saturday, May 30, 2009 - 03:15 am
Hey Siva,
I'm not sure if that's quite right. You could be right, but I didn't notice a significant change in the Total Defense Cost with or without garrisons. That could just mean garrison usage is very low. The number does fluctuate, but it didn't move much either way. All of my money was going to "Income/Cost for Defensive Weapons and Ammo" on the financial statement. Ammo costs could be split between both lines, making it harder to decipher where money is going. |
| Ummagumma (Little Upsilon) | Saturday, May 30, 2009 - 04:08 pm
You are correct Dainbramage, my observations are similar |
| CraftyCockney (Golden Rainbow) | Saturday, May 30, 2009 - 08:14 pm
Garrisons are auto supplied (in peace time) right, and you can't really see what the game is buying, what quality, what price and how much. Weapons not in garrisons are at bases and are supplied with ammo from the bases, which you CAN order at set quality and stock levels and you can see how much of what you are using. That is for ACTIVATED weapons. I believe if you de-activate the weapons they wont use ammo monthly at all, (would make sense, though there may be a maintenance cost).
Thats just the way I see it anyhow. I had the massive expenditure hit when the garrison supply rule changed too, just waiting for the game to decide I need 100M tank shells again.
Good luck.
CraftyCockney. |
| CraftyCockney (Golden Rainbow) | Saturday, May 30, 2009 - 08:18 pm
Silly Idea 
Keep decs open ad infinitum with a neighbouring C3 by lobbing the occasional firework at it and so always have control of garrison ammo supplies using supply units. No? |
